


In other words...

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-24 13:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7510282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fake-married Westallen spies AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t real, Barry kept reminding himself, _this_ wasn’t real. It felt real though.

Iris, and the smell of her, her perfume, the same one he always smelled whenever she would press herself closer, the one always lingering on her coats and her scarves around the house, mixed with the same scent he felt that day he went into her bathroom right after her taking a shower, looking for something that his foggy brain seemed unable to remember at the moment.

And the feel of her, of her silk deep purple dress and her soft and warm skin, under his fingertips.

And the sound of her, her laugh at his inability of moving accordingly, and her voice as she sang on tune _fill my heart with song and let me sing for ever more, you are all I long for all I worship and adore,_ and then the way she looked him in the eyes, hers dark and warm, luring him in, her lashes fuller than usual and something sparkling in her lids, and how they fluttered as she almost whispered the next verse; _in other words, please be true_ , and it felt real, it felt like she was asking it from him as she placed her berry painted lips on his, lightly enough so she could then pretend like it never happened, but Barry was sure it wasn’t a feverish dream, and he got his confirmation as she rubbed her lipstick off his lips.

Still it wasn’t real; none of it was. It felt real though.

 

* * *

 

_[A few weeks earlier]_

Barry pushed his glasses up his nose as he stepped out of the car and onto the grass. It looked fake but he resisted the urge to check it, touch it to make sure. Instead he took a step back so he could take the whole picture in. There were palm trees in front of the house. Actual palm trees 15 meters tall, like the ones Barry had only ever seen in movies.

The sunset was glowing orange, reflecting on the beige paint of the front of the house and on the pretty flowers scattered around colouring the picture even more, and somehow he found it difficult to believe that he was in Central City. It looked like some uptight rich Californian town, or maybe something out of old Hollywood back when shameless ostentation was the rule. Maybe a version of the _Great Gatsby_ coloured in muted pastel hues.

It was surreal; a mansion on the rich side of the town and a beautiful wife and a black cat.

The cat came to greet him with its owner and then followed them around, accompanying Iris and Barry as she showed him the house. The agency wanted a golden retriever but Iris insisted in taking her own pet, which was how they ended up with Peanut.

Of course it wasn’t his, none of it was; not his house, or his wife, or his cat. Not his life.

“This is supposed to be the guest suite. You can stay here.” Iris suggested; “but I’m afraid you can’t decorate or it would be a bit too obvious.”

She looked at him and was probably able to identify at least some of the panic in his eyes. He didn’t know exactly what he was panicking for, the mission, finally dawning on him, or Iris, and the fact that she was looking more _real_ than all the other times he had seen her. Probably both. She was somehow scarier out of the labs of the agency.

“Not that I’ll decorate mine, or you know, ours,” she continued and Barry recognised the forced soft tone she would assume some times; “the agency decorated everything. I’ll stay in the main suite, I think we should keep your clothes there in the closet with mine, leave the minimal amount actually in your room…”

And they proceeded through the seemingly endless rooms of their house. Peanut followed Iris the whole time, dancing around her bare feet, sniffing Barry’s shoes.

_Could cats actually disapprove of human beings?_ Because Barry was sure he was failing some kind of test Peanut was putting him through.

He had met Iris three weeks to the day. Three weeks and sometimes he would still find it pretty hard to concentrate on anything that wasn’t her and how surprisingly beautiful she was. Especially now with how she was wearing these  kinds of clothes he had never seen her in. Who would have guessed Iris West actually owned t-shirts and sweatpants? Maybe they were part of the cover. The agency provided wardrobe, like most of his clothes in their _shared_ closet. More suits than Barry could probably wear in a lifetime hanging on the fancy looking hangers. Rich people were weird.

Iris was the daughter of the Wests and everybody on the Meta-human National Security Agency had at least heard of the Wests, if they didn’t know them personally. Barry had heard some gossip before. Things he picked up here and there about Joe and Francine West, some of the biggest MNSA agents, and their kids; the boy who was supposed to be some kind of engineering genius, and their “very pretty and difficult to deal with” daughter.

Now, as Barry looked at Iris, he thought whoever had called her “very pretty” had at the very least mild vision problems. She was closer to the perfect mark than anyone he had ever seen in his life.

He also thought the “very pretty and difficult to deal with” part completely disregarded that Iris was easily one of the most intelligent people Barry had ever met, brilliant even, and that included his college roommate and best friend, Cisco, another engineering genius, and this one Barry could actually testify to.

Iris had become an agent like her parents and while Barry mostly studied throughout his postgrad degrees, she had worked successful cases, some of which turned famous among the agency. She had also acquired a reputation of being extremely picky with her meta-human partners and legend had it that she was always the one refusing to work a second time with any of them.

Now Barry was next on the list. And he secretly prayed she would break her no-second-time rule for him.

And the truth was it was surreal, all of it, the mission, the mansion, Peanut -  who seemed to be some weirdly human type of cat - and especially Iris. Especially how easy it had been to work with her. Up until now at least.

“Don’t worry about Peanut,” Iris advised Barry while, for some reason Barry was failing to grasp, picking up ties from a drawer full of ties on the chest of drawers that stayed against one of the walls of her ridiculously big bedroom, and analysing them on Barry.

“She’ll warm up to you,” Iris concluded, settling on a burgundy tie, throwing that over Barry’s shoulder and moving back into the closet.

Barry wasn’t sure if he was supposed to follow so he stood still while Peanut circled his legs again and he considered if he should scratch the back of her ears, ultimately deciding against it, telling Iris;

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

Iris had a smile on her lips when she stepped out of the closet, holding a suit and the fanciest white shirt Barry had ever seen in one arm and a burgundy dress that matched the tie in the other. She indicated for him to take the suit and then laid the dress on her bed going back into the closet and stepping out again, only this time holding a pair of men’s shoes that she placed on top of the suit Barry was holding, and two pairs of thin striped sandals, one silver and one black, placing those against the dress, analysing her two choices in silence.

From her lack of response Barry assumed he was probably right about Peanut after all, so he offered, even though he had no idea why she was planning the outfit;

“I like the silver one better.”   

“We should get ready, then” Iris instructed him.

She stepped closer to Barry, close enough to grab his chin between her fingers and turn his face, analysing something on his skin (or Barry assumed). It was the first time he was seeing Iris without her heels on and Barry was having a hard time processing just how tiny she was when out of the MNSA laboratories and not carrying a gun.

(He guessed she wasn’t carrying a gun. She didn’t seem to have a lot of room to hide it in her outfit anyway.)

She brushed his hair off his forehead and Barry wanted to tell her there wasn’t much getting around the hair or making it behave but the words never made out of his lips somehow and when Iris stepped back, eyes still studying his face, Barry was able to breath again.  

“There’s this dinner at the yacht club; we should go and, you know, socialise,” Iris explained.

“Socialise?” he repeated.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled; “I’ll hold your hand the whole way through it,” Iris guaranteed him and there was none of her fake softness left, it was all sharp sarcasm, and it hadn’t been long but Barry had already noticed how she took teasing him as a sport.

“Right,” Barry agreed, his traitor hand jumping on the nape of his neck, almost dropping the shoes on the ground with the abruptness of the movement, (thank god for super speed), and he tried concentrating on her words and not her lips as she explained the goal of this particular mission.

This was definitely surreal.

 

* * *

 

 

About four weeks prior, there was a big robbery of the agency’s armament and Iris was designated to work on the recovery plan.

Iris _and Barry,_ since he was responsible for the discovery of the robbery in the first place, and apparently had knowledge on some of the designs. Cisco Ramon was responsible for them and Barry had helped him build some of the guns.

They spent two weeks in Barry’s lab at the MNSA theorising about how the robbery was done by a group that called themselves the Rogues, but every endeavour to find proof seemed like a dead end until finally the Mason decided to send them undercover to investigate the suspected leaders of the so-called Rogues: Leonard Snart and his wife Sara Lance, who also happened to be pretty untouchable, even for the agency, as the very best of Central City’s high society.

Which explained the mansion, and the location of the mansion, right by Snart’s, and the husband, or rather the cover, Iris supposed; these type of people always seemed to consider being married something bigger than simply having a husband or a wife, like it was somehow moving up on the social scale.

Not that Iris cared. About the house, or the cover, or Barry. It was three weeks - a month and a half tops -  a house so big that shouldn’t have the right to exist, befriending a couple of criminals that hopefully wouldn’t be too boring because the more she would have to fake interested the more exhausting it would be, and sharing a house with Barry, which she suspected shouldn’t be exhausting. Barry was easy.

He was… _different_ from the other meta-humans Iris had worked with. For starters he didn’t flaunt his powers around, he would use them sometimes, Iris had seen him use them, especially the super speed since he was always late, but he would usually arrive, messing her hair and blowing the papers around but mostly being apologetically.

He was also kind. That was the best word she could think to describe him. He could be impatient sometimes and Iris figured that was because having the world being unable to keep up with his speed must be tiring, but he seemed to care so much about things around him and he paid such disconcerting attention to the people around him (well Iris assumed she didn’t get any special attention, he obviously was like that with everyone else), that he had quickly worn most of her defences down.

Maybe because he could seem so scared sometimes and even though the whole eyes turned big and the occasional rambling that accompanied could be cute, Iris couldn’t for the life of her understand how someone who could run away so quickly could be that scared of anything.      

But he couldn’t really run away from everything, Iris considered, like from this, from the mission and from her, and he seemed scared. He seemed scared as they were told they were supposed to go undercover for the investigations, and there was some fear on his eyes when she showed him the house, as the reality of it dawned on him, Iris supposed, and as he stood by her side now, entering the party.

So Iris stopped him, fixing the bowtie that she chose to match her dress, and she suddenly missed his glasses. She had never seen him in glasses before, she didn’t know he needed them, and when he arrived, she briefly considered that he was wearing them as part of the cover persona, but they were actually real and she noticed how they made his green eyes and stupidly long eyelashes slightly smaller, and now he was back wearing his usual contacts. Iris pressed her hands down on his shoulder, adjusting the suit and taking the moment to instruct him;

“Just be yourself as much as possible, the less you have to fake the easier this will be.”

And then she held his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. She was mostly joking when she had promised him to hold his hand the whole way through it, but it did make sense; couples held hands.

(She also liked the way he was looking at her like he had never seen her before.)

But before there was space or time for it to turn into anything, Iris saw the perfect opportunity; she couldn’t have designed it better herself.

She pushed Barry back slightly, just so, so he would knock into the blonde in a bright blue dress that complimented her hair like out of a colour chart, making the blonde drop her martini to the ground.

Barry didn’t have time to save the drink, he had his back to the woman and when he managed to look away from Iris, and turn around, the glass had already shattered, so instead he apologised profusely about being such a klutz.

“No, no, don’t worry,” the woman said, placing a hand on Barry’s arm; “it’s a victimless crime, see? Not one drop on my dress,” she concluded with a bright smile.

“I’m Iris, this is my husband Barry,” Iris introduced herself; “maybe we could get you another drink?”

Sara Lance turned out to be friendly enough as to offer a place for them on her table, or maybe she was just curious about the new neighbours, so Iris had to put no extra effort in the introduction. She didn’t fool Barry though, not that she was trying, but he gave her a poignant look after getting a good look at Sara and as they walked to the table he bent down to whisper on her ear;

“Next time a little heads up would be nice.”

But all his composure was gone as Barry shook hands with Sara’s husband, and with each question, Leonard Snart made him quiver. He held his cover though, better than Iris expected him to, considering it was his first field mission, and even if she was always half ready to jump in, it proved unnecessary. Weirdly what seemed most difficult for Barry to say was that Iris was his wife.

It was only when Iris tried to lean in, to place a little kiss on him, that Barry almost gave himself away, turning his head to the side and Iris got his cheek instead of the aimed lips, so when Sara left “to do the rounds” and Leonard offered to go refresh their drinks, Iris moved closer, pulling Barry to her by nape of his neck, and she said between her teeth, maintaining the smile on her face even though she felt like kicking him;

“Barry, I know it’s probably difficult, but try not to flinch when I touch you, we’re supposed to be married, remember?”

And Barry offered her the puppy eyes again as he muttered;

“Right, sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just weird,” he justified and Iris tried to not be offended by that, taking the white wine Snart handed to her.

But even so, despite the little nasty comment Leonard offered, questioning Barry how on earth he got himself a girl like Iris, they seemed to have no trouble in believing her and Barry as a couple, even with the flinching, that got better after Iris’s scold, and by the end of the night they had landed themselves an invitation for dinner in their house, so Iris counted their first day as a victory.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m still curious, Barry, how did you ever manage to get a girl like Iris here?”

It was their second double-date-dinner, at her and Barry’s place this time.

The dinner at the Snarts had served so they could scan the place, searching for possible secret rooms and whatnots of their criminal activities, but even with Barry’s super speed, they had come up empty. The only thing they were able to find out was that they owned land by the waterfront, where the yacht club was built and a house at Coast City, so Iris was trying to get an invitation for a weekend on the beach without being too obvious and Barry had searched around the club with no results as well.

Now the four of them were sitting at the living room, and Peanut seemed to have taken a liking for Sara, offering Iris’s guest her peanut-coloured belly, and after the meal and the dessert and hosting everything when it had served absolutely no investigative purposes other than getting their neighbours to trust them, Iris just wanted for them to go home.

She had spent a great part of the day cooking, and she wanted to take her damn shoes and her bra off; instead she was sharing an armchair with Barry, sitting on his lap and listening to Snart go on and on about how his bad boy charm had been what caused Sara to fall for him and as Sara laughed at her husband suggesting it wasn’t true.

And maybe Iris was more worn out than she thought she was, maybe she was simply tired of it, of how Snart kept on nagging Barry, implying he was somehow beneath Iris, or maybe she was afraid their cover was being put under unexpected scrutiny, either way she decided to put a stop to it once and for all and responded;

“Barry gives the best head a girl could possibly get.”

She actually felt Barry growing warm under her, his cheeks and neck more red than she had ever seen, and Iris had seen that boy blushing before, so she cradled his face in her hands, placing a kiss on his eyebrow and then another, soft one, on his lips, and it wasn’t for show, it was an instinctually need to purr on him and perhaps that was why Barry nuzzled on her neck, perhaps he was merely trying to hide his embarrassment, but Iris considered that either way it served the purpose of keeping the appearance of intimacy, and it must have worked because Sara argued;

“Oh, come on, he’s just too cute, what girl wouldn’t want that?”

“You, I hope,” Snart answered, and Sara took the opportunity to get on her feet and pull her husband to her adding;

“Ok, I think we’ve pestered them enough for one day, let’s go home and let Barry put those skills to good use.”

And Iris liked Sara; she was fun most of the time. They were boxing together and Iris found that Sara was easy to talk to, and she liked talking, about how her dad didn’t like Snart and opposed to the marriage and about how she was always the difficult daughter and about how Snart made her feel like she didn’t have to change to be worthy of love and the more she talked, the harder Iris found to believe that she knew anything. Sara seemed too spontaneous to be fake and too kind to have a plan to take control over meta-humans. But then again, she was too smart to simply be fooled by her husband.

And after the pleasantries of their farewells, Iris finally took her leather boots off and the weight of the pretending dissolved from her shoulders as she walked to the kitchen to get one last scoop of ice cream, and one glass of wine since she had barely drank any of it during dinner. Barry and Peanut followed behind her.

It had only been a week but she was getting used to having Barry around. Or to being around him. Either way, Iris found she enjoyed his noises and his silences more than most people’s.

He did the dishes in a flash, as she poured the wine, and Iris was definitely going to miss that when she didn’t have him around anymore. She was going to miss him.

“They seem happy,” Barry commented, sticking his spoon in her bowl of ice-cream, which Iris abruptly and offendedly pulled away from him before he actually took any of it, and merely offered;

“Yeah, they do.”

“And here we are,” he said, managing to get around her and pick some of her ice-cream, licking the spoon clean before concluding; “trying to find proof of something that will land them in jail.”

Barry was too soft and kind, and Iris suspected he couldn’t fake the friendship so he was actually becoming their friend. Maybe putting him on the field hadn’t been the best decision Mason could make. Not that Iris herself had had any complaints about working with him; she was just starting to suspect his feelings might surface as a problem eventually;

“Barry —” she said, trying to keep her voice soft and Iris had never noticed before the weight of his name on her lips, and Barry ruffled his hairs, saying;

“I feel bad. I know it’s ridiculous but I feel bad.”

“You can’t let yourself get attached, Barry. They aren’t our friends. It’s not real. This life, it’s not real.”

“I know. I know.”

He sat up on the kitchen counter, making himself even taller than he already was, but there was something childish about the way he swayed his feet in complete silence for a while so Iris offered him her ice-cream, pushing the bowl next to him.

“No, thank you,” Barry declined, slipping back on his feet, and Iris, before she could consider it further, reached for his hair, but Barry flinched out of her touch, saying;

“I’m going to bed.”

And Iris couldn’t explain why this sudden cold hit her, or why her voice sounded so small when she said;

“Ok.”

And Barry’s voice was what kept bothering Iris, keeping her from sleeping. He sounded wounded, somehow. And about 3 o’clock in the morning, Iris realised something and she couldn’t wait till morning to talk to him, so she opened the door to his bedroom and it wasn’t locked but Barry was asleep, somehow he managed it, and he looked like a child, and for about the third time that day Iris thought that he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t have been stuck in this life, so Iris kneeled on the mattress by his side and shook him awake;

“Barry? Barry — wake up!”

He sat up in a hurry, patting for his glasses, putting them on;

“What? What? What’s wrong?”

So she tried explaining him;

“I meant them.”

“What?” he asked turning the bedside table light on, looking at her, his eyes full of sleep, so she tried explaining;

“What I said earlier, I didn’t mean us — I meant them.”

“Iris —” he started but she couldn’t let him talk, she didn’t want to hear what was about to be out of his lips, so she tried again;

“I mean, you are my friend. I’m your friend. That is real.”

And she watched as Barry deflated, his shoulders slouching as he nodded;

“Yeah, ok.”

“Ok,” she reached for his hand, the one on the mattress and she rested her hand on his, softly, so he wouldn’t scare away; thankful he didn’t flinch or move out of her reach this time, but Barry looked away from her and offered;

“I know you must think I’m stupid for feeling sorry for the criminals. Maybe leave that part out of your report for the agency.”

And her lungs felt full of something cold and Iris was torn between incredulity that he would think such thing, that he would actually believe that she would report on him, that she didn’t follow the _your partner first_ rule, and commiseration for the fact that he considered that the agency would ask something like that from his partner in the first place, so she told him;

“I don’t report on you, Barry. And I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Right,” he said, but he slid back down laying in the bed and Iris laid by his side, guaranteeing him;

“I don’t. I think you are kind, and I admire that about you.”

And when he didn’t respond, Iris reminded him;

“They stole our armament, Barry.”

“I know,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced at all.

“They stole a bunch of guns that can stop meta-humans. They have a gun that can hurt you. They can hurt you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Ok,” Iris agreed, deciding she should probably drop the subject, so she reached for the blanket so she could cover herself and Barry froze by her side, questioning;

“What are you doing?”

“I’m cold, I want a bit of the blankets,” she explained.

“Right,” he agreed, not adding anything else, and after that it took no time for Iris to finally fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

She never asked, she assumingly stayed, and it wasn’t that she took much space, she didn’t, not physically anyway, she was tiny enough, and silent enough, and skilful enough to go by unnoticed. But not by Barry.

The trouble was he knew it wasn’t real, Iris being on his bed meant nothing. Her promising him they were friends didn’t make the rest of it any closer to reality. Except it felt real, her arm around his chest and her nose on his neck and the fact that she liked the lemon muffins better than the double chocolate one, and the fact that his brain was already planning on making her coffee and bringing her the last lemon muffin, and he would eat the double chocolate and it wouldn’t matter.

So Barry moved from under her, sitting up on bed with his back to Iris trying to clear his mind and shake himself out of the impression that she was more real than Becky or Felicity or Fiona or Patty had ever been, cause Iris wasn’t real, this wasn’t real and he needed to keep reminding himself of that.

But then he felt her fingertips sliding down his spine and it was one fluid motion. Iris was always graceful, in the most unassuming things, and maybe that was part of the problem so Barry jumped out of bed and she offered him a laugh, one that sounded genuine, and she probably assumed that she startled him with her touch rather than scared him with it, and the smile was still on her lips as she offered with a cat stretch;  

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Barry answered, pulling the first hoody sweater he could find down his head. More clothes seemed like a smart option.

“You know what I want?” Iris asked, closing back her eyes, probably deeming his awkwardness as nothing new and Barry guessed, only because it was how _he_ was feeling at that particular moment;

“For this to be over?” and by this he meant everything. It sounded like a good guess because just the other day, Iris was complaining about how slow the investigations were going so he figured she would agree, instead she offered;

“To stay in bed,” and she spoke like it was the most unreachable dream; “and a lemon muffin, or you know, three, but there’s only one left anyway. And I can’t stay in bed, I have to go shopping with Sara and then I have to have lunch with Sara and then I have to go boxing with Sara.”

But instead of moving out of the bed, to get her lemon muffin and go boxing she snuggled into his pillow, taking a deep breath and swinging her legs half out of the covers and the vision of her in his bed sent a shiver down Barry’s spine;

“Iris,” he called, probably asking something from her but he couldn’t really tell what so she obviously wouldn’t either, so she asked;

“What?”

“I just —” he shook himself out of it; “I need coffee.”

And Barry was still curious as to why she felt the need to wake him up in the middle of the night just so she could tell him that they were in fact friends, but he must have looked unconvinced because she tried reassuring him once again;

“Barry, I was telling the truth, I’m not reporting on you. You’re my friend, what I said, I meant it about Snart and Sara.”

“I know,” Barry guaranteed, mostly because he wanted to believe in her, he wanted to trust that more than anything, but there was a nagging thought that wouldn’t leave him alone that she had left all of her previous meta-human partners and that why would he be different? Why would Iris West pick him?

“Barry —”

“I know. I know,” he said before she could insist any further; “I just…”

He stopped himself, he was about to say something he wouldn’t be able to take back and he really shouldn’t.

“You just what?” Iris probed him.

“I just don’t really feel comfortable in sharing a bed,” and it was half the truth. And the most important part he left out, but he couldn’t very well tell her _because I’m already half in love with you._

And he noticed he was about to work himself into a panic attack so he tried not analysing the meaning on her face, surely she wasn’t hurt for any reason of the ones he could think of, surely the small voice in which she offered;

“Oh — oh! Ok. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He left the room after that. He didn’t want to see her getting off his bed, or the pyjamas she was wearing (he knew they were shorts but he really didn’t need to see them). But Iris never went to the kitchen to have her breakfast even though he made the coffee incredibly strong just because she liked her coffee that strong. He didn’t have the courage to tell her that though, he stood in the kitchen, the lemon muffin untouched and he heard Iris leaving through the front door without offering a word and this unreasonable guilt crept upon him, his mind racing around how he could be so incredibly stupid as to hurt her.

Barry considered calling Iris, or maybe sending her a text, multiple times throughout the day. He couldn’t concentrate on any of the reports about the Rogues he was reading for the millionth time, and he couldn’t concentrate on his board with all the most important informations of the crime, he couldn’t do anything except consider the fact that Iris was proud and stubborn and it was very likely that, if he had actually hurt her, if she got into some trouble she would avoid calling him. So it was 6 o’clock and Barry was about to go out and search for her, when from the home office (which was actually his lab), he heard some noises and then her voice carrying;

“Hey, baby, I’m home.”

And Barry knew thanks to the _baby_ that they had company, so he cleaned the lab as to look like an unsuspected internet-startup millionaire home office and went to greet whoever was accompanying her;

“Hey, Iris,” Barry said before turning to the entering hall, and then pretending to be surprised ( _and he was so bad at it_ ), he added; “Oh, hi, hey, Sara.”

And Iris didn’t approach to greet him with a little kiss like she usually would if there were people around, and Barry knew for sure her hurt had turned into anger when she almost step out of his reach, taking a deep breath before kissing him back, and he ignored his guilt once again so he could ask;

“How was boxing?”

“Good,” Sara answered, as Iris slid off her over coat revealing her boxing apparel underneath, and then she added; “Iris kicked some serious ass today.”

And Iris explained;

“I had some anger I needed to work through,” her eyes on Barry, and he watched her, taking off her shoes and dropping her bag on the ground by the coat-hanger, and walking towards the kitchen, Peanut already dancing between her feet, and Iris’s boobs bounced a little with her forceful steps, and her tiny shorts definitely worked for her butt and Barry only noticed he was staring when Sara laughed at him, before following Iris into the kitchen.

“So, Barry,” Sara asked accepting the bottle of water Iris offered her; “did you ever buy the _I’m so tiny_ act Iris pulls?”

And he didn’t exactly know how to answer to that. What could he say, really? He knew her reputation when he met her, he knew Iris could very likely kick his ass, and the confirmation to that fact came when they moved in together and Iris, appalled by his lack of field skills started training him (though in his defence, she had the advantage of being extremely distracting), and he was thankful for the super speed that allowed him to formulate an answer before and awkwardly long pause;

“I met her in heels.”

“You met me in heels?” Iris questioned, and Barry couldn’t be imagining the little bit of disdain in her eyes; “That’s your answer?”

And she seemed so… _unimpressed_ , and Barry always had this ridiculous necessity of impressing her, so he tried again;

“Iris always looked 7 feet tall to me.”

And Sara swooned at that but Iris merely rolled her eyes.

She rolled them the exact same way she would roll her eyes at the speed that the bruises she would give him while they were training would heal. It was like the fact that he wouldn’t remain marked was a nuisance, and like the fact that she had to hear to this conversation now was another one.

Iris grabbed the bowl filled with grapes from the fridge and changed the subject saying;    

“Sara just invited us to a weekend at Coast City,” and she bat her eyelashes at him like she was trying to convince him of something and Barry suspected she had complained about him to Sara, making up some excuse like _he works too much and doesn’t have time for me_ , so the rest of the phrase didn’t surprise him, but the tone her voice assumed, like she was purring something indecent in his ears did; “and I know you’re busy with work but I thought maybe we could go? Take the weekend off?”

And Iris was good at this pretending, she sounded like she was really asking him, and Barry would never catch up, so he merely nod, and watched as a smile spread on her face like she had actually for a moment believed he would say no.


	3. Chapter 3

This was surreal: catching a private jet to Coast City for a weekend and all Barry could think looking at the house, all decorated with navy themes in blue and red and cream, was that whoever said crime didn’t pay was completely wrong and the Snarts were proof.

They arrived with the sunset, and it was still only the beginning of spring so the place was desert and windy, and Barry was trying not to enjoy the scenery. It somehow felt wrong to. But it was difficult not to. The skies clear and blue, and the dark sea hitting the rocks and the sounds of the waves and the way Iris’s skirt kept flying up and her hair danced with the wind, until she pulled it into a bun, as they took a walk on the warm sand made it so he had to remind himself they weren’t actually taking a weekend off.

(And he suspected that Iris must have been feeling close to the same because the smile she offered him after his snide comment about Snart liking the cold lit up her whole face and caused Barry to suspect that there would be absolutely no scientific explanations to it. When she smiled genuinely, Iris would just turn everything around her prettier, like her beauty suddenly reflected on the world surrounding.)

The property was practically built on the shore, close to where the rocks were, which made the passage to the other side impossible and that meant the Snarts ended up with a private beach;

“Not that it is private,” Sara explained; “but almost no one wanders here, especially this time of the year.”

Despite her smile though, Iris was still a bit constrained with him since the whole bed thing; it had been a few days and she was still touching him way less than she usually did, not much holding hands or random leaning into him, which he was ridiculously missing. But it was when Sara left them in one of the many guest-suites that Barry truly noticed how bad his comment had made things for Iris when she turned her back to him, unpacking something he couldn’t see from her suitcase, and offered;

“I can sleep on the floor, you take the bed.”

“No,” he said. Barry hadn’t even thought about the fact that  they would have to share a room until that moment, but he had put himself in this mess so he wasn’t about to make her pay for it; “I can take the floor, don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not gonna let you sleep on the floor; it’s cold and dirty.”

And Barry knew Iris had this _no-shoe upstairs_ policy in the house they were sharing, so he suspected that she must have a no-shoe policy in her real home, and that was definitely not a policy shared by Sara, so it made the thought of her sleeping on the floor even worse.

“And I’m supposed to let you sleep on it?”

“I have field training,” she justified, but there wasn’t much logic there, so he swallowed what was left of his pride and proposed;

“How about we share the bed? It’s big enough for two.”

She turned to him, keeping her face on neutral and Barry found she was good at that too, at not showing what she was feeling, whereas he was probably the most transparent person to ever walk the earth. Especially when it came down to her.

“I thought you weren’t comfortable with sharing a bed with me,” she pointed out, returning his words back to him, and God, he was so stupid.

“Well, extreme circumstances,” he offered and Iris laughed humorlessly at that, so he tried again;

“I’m sorry, Iris. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, digging through her bag now and informing him; “I’ll wash up.”

Barry figured that was better than a blunt no or something to the effect. He still avoided the bed, though, planting himself by the window while Iris was using the bathroom, watching the sea and contemplating the level of stupidity he could reach every now and again.

After his turn in the bathroom, he came out to find Iris in fetal position on the edge of the bed, like she was trying to minimise the space she would take, and Barry took it as a sign that she had agreed on sharing the bed, however reluctantly. He couldn’t really confirm it though; he doubted the authenticity of her slumber, but she never answered him when he called.

And as it turned out, the next morning, he was the one clinging to her this time around. Iris had her back to Barry, but he was holding her by the waist, nose nuzzling in the nape of her neck and after unnecessarily making her angry, the pose felt extra humiliating, so he let her go abruptly, turning around and noticing that - to make matters worse - he was completely on her side of the bed, and the cherry on top was that Iris was awake. As soon as he un-plastered himself from her, she shifted to face him.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he said.

Iris studied his face silently, eyes heavy on him, but offered nothing in return, so Barry tried;

“It’s really cold in here,” and once it was out of his lips, he realised what a weak attempt at an excuse the words were, but that broke Iris a little; she rolled her eyes, but there was a small curve to her lips while she did so.

“I know,” she agreed, rubbing her legs on his as to warm them up; “it’s a nice comfortable bed though,” she diverted her eyes from his face, studying the bedroom in the morning light; “It’s a pretty house.”

“Yeah,” Barry agreed, and then, before he could think things through, he told her; “the fireplace in the living room is exactly like the one in my parents’ house.”

And he couldn’t point to the reason why it somehow felt like a confession, but Iris seemed to understand it like one as well as she commented;

“You never talk about your parents.”

“There’s not much to say. They’ve disappeared when I was 10, that’s all.”

It wasn’t completely true; Barry had looked for his parents. In fact, the entire reason he accepted the job offer at the agency was so he could look further into it, but he never found any evidence or clue different from the ones he had obsessed over since he was 10 years old. But before Iris had any time to probe him any further about it, there was a knock on the door and Iris asked;

“Yeah?”

“It’s Sara. Are you two decent? Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure, come in,” Iris responded and then Sara was entering with a breakfast cart that contained more food than Barry’s fridge on an average day and informing them;

“Lenny and I are heading to the beach, we like to walk around by the water in the mornings; you guys should join us, but feel free to take your time.”

And Iris, who was now sitting up on the bed, thanked Sara for the third time while Barry stayed quiet, under the covers, trying to not enjoy the fact that the small of Iris’s back was mere inches away from his fingertips, exposed by the way the top of her pyjamas had ridden up during the night.

“Are you ok there, Barry?” Sara questioned him.

“Cold, it’s very cold.”

“I know,” Sara agreed apologetically; “the heating on this property is terrible, I keep telling Lenny we have to do something about it, but he likes the cold.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll warm him up,” Iris guaranteed.

“See you in a bit then.”

As soon as Sara closed the door, Iris jumped out of bed, getting dressed in front of Barry like it was no big deal (granted, she didn’t get naked _naked_ , but still). She planted herself by the window with ocean view, drinking a cup of coffee at an alarming speed, and it was only then, after apparently spotting what she was waiting for on the beach, that she turned to Barry and said;

“Come on, now it’s our chance,” that he understood her hurry.

 

* * *

 

If the bedroom was cold,  it didn’t compare to the wine cellar. They had looked everywhere around the house, and Iris felt that coming up empty handed was becoming a theme when it came to this investigation. There was about half an hour that Sara had left them with breakfast and Iris decided that anything longer than an hour for them to join their hosts on the beach would be too much and she was getting more and more anxious by the second.

She had a feeling about this wine cellar though, like she could feel herself tingling with the prospect of information, but after circling the room two times (well, she had circled the room two times; she had stopped counting how many times Barry had gone around), it was starting to look like she was wrong after all. That was until she spotted a suspicious looking snowflake decanter located behind some other fancy looking decanters that had caused her to miss it the first time around.

Barry noticed her looking and approached it, standing by her side, and the thing seemed glued on counter and Iris poked it every way imaginable with her gloved hands and it was when she forcefully pulled it back that behind one of the walls filled with wine bottles, opened a passage, which caused Barry to look at her with the most childlike smile on his face, so she couldn’t help to respond to it with a smile of her own.

The corridor that opened was humid and dark, no lights anywhere around. It smelled like mold, and was hardly wide enough for one person. It went on for a long time and it got Iris thinking how claustrophobia resistance was probably the first thing on the Rogues’ screening process. By the end of it, it opened into a round room, also lacking in lighting, with the walls similar to the wine cellar, but instead of bottles, it was filled with tube cases. Iris reached for the closest one as Barry held his cellphone flashlight above Iris’s head so they could see what filled the cases.

She was relieved to find it was paper. For a moment, she actually feared there would be something revolting in them. Instead, there were newspaper clips reporting a robbery and documents detailing the blueprint of  Central City’s National Bank, the one located downtown, and just as she realised what they were Barry said;

“It’s like documentation of their crimes.”

“Yep.”

Then he looked around, swinging the flashlight according to the movement of his gaze, leaving Iris slightly dizzy with the speed of it.

“Barry,” she called for him to stop it, but she was able to notice how the room was filled with those, how the records and all the documentation of the planning necessary for them to invade the agency’s headquarters and probably where the guns were hidden at this very moment, were available at arm's’ reach.

“Ok,” Barry said, and the moment was a reminder of why she liked working with Barry; they seemed to have a sort of unspoken communication, making the same jumps at the same time; “you hold the light and I’ll go through these until we find the one with the information about the agency’s robbery.”

“Barry,” she held him by the arm; “this is proof of every crime ever committed by the Rogues.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that we go take a stroll on the beach with Leonard and Sara, go back to Central City when the weekend is over and then you and me come back here and make copies of all those files.”

“Iris, we should focus on the mission, these other robberies and crimes, they have nothing to do with the stolen guns, it shouldn’t matter, Snart is going away for life anyway —”

“It does matter, Barry. Or do you think all of those files, all of those crimes, do you think there were never people affected by them? The people they took hostage on the day they robbed the National Bank, they should know who threatened them, they should know they were caught, all the people who were ever affected by this, they deserve to get their justice as well.”

And Barry’s impatience was stamped on his eyes, recognisable even under the dim light, but Iris watched his stare at her like she was the most unreasonable person to ever exist transform into something else and she knew she had won the discussion when he rolled the files he had taken from Iris’s hands back into the case and put it back into its space on the wall with a soft;

“Ok.”

After that Barry rushed them out of the cellar, past the kitchen and to the beach before Iris could process it. She found it much more difficult to concentrate on the pretending part of the job now that she knew what was waiting for them, siting underground. It was difficult to laugh and engage in a silly conversation, and to make matters worse, it was still weird between her and Barry. Sara noticed that. And when the four of them were walking around the farmer's market after lunch, she managed an excuse to get Iris to fall behind with her and asked;

“Are you and Barry still fighting?”

Iris took a deep breath at that. After the bed incident, Sara had noticed Iris wasn’t quite all right and Iris ended up making up a story about how Barry had complained about Iris keeping him from work and being in the way at inappropriate hours, hours he had important things to do.

It had been a weak excuse, but it was the closest to the truth Iris could think of; after all, telling Sara her _husband_ didn’t want to share a bed with her would have led to extreme repercussions. The excuse seemed to Iris like a problem married people would actually have and in the end, it worked better than Iris had planned; it had been the reason why Sara invited them for a weekend to Coast City.

Iris liked Sara and that was about to be a problem. She had told Barry he couldn’t get attached, but she was failing on taking her own advice. There weren’t many people at the academy that she was actually friends with. Linda and Stacey, and Iris liked Mason alright, but he was her boss, and it was difficult to find people to trust with everything that came with this sort of life when they didn’t share it.

Sara was perceptive, which was really a big problem, but Iris liked that about her. She was also blunt and fun (Iris was expecting either a boring housewife or a cold snob when they were briefed on the mission, but Sara was anything but a boring snob), so as she held Iris, intertwining their arms as they stopped to analyse some strawberries, Iris found herself telling her the actual truth this time;

“He apologised for what he said, I believe he’s sorry, but that doesn’t make it less true, I don’t know…”

“You’re still hurt.”  

And there was the dangerous perception again.

Iris couldn’t understand the reason his words had hurt so much, and she noticed how Barry was trying, he was trying to fill her lack of touch, and for most part, he was too tentative and steered away from anything close to a kiss, but he took her hand in his during their walk on the beach, and that felt true, as did the way he stole her fries at lunch. Even though Iris knew it was for the cover, she couldn’t match this Barry, who would act like those things were natural, to the one who couldn’t stand the fact that she had fallen asleep on his bed, and she certainly couldn’t understand what about her could make him so uncomfortable.

It wasn’t that it was unreasonable for him to not want to share a bed with her - she wasn’t comfortable in sharing a bed with most people she knew herself - but she didn’t mind Barry, and the fact that he minded her was probably what bothered her so much, was probably what was stopping her from reaching for him. So she merely nodded at Sara as an answer.

“There you guys are!” Barry appeared by her side, a slightly panicked look on his face and Iris shook her head at it. His panic seemed genuine, like he was afraid Sara would do something to her, which was incredibly silly; there wasn’t any chance Sara, even in the case of having figured everything out, would act hastily, especially in a publicly open space with Barry about 30 feet away.

But Sara apparently thought that Barry’s reaction to losing the sight of his wife was cute, whispering in Iris’s ear;

“You should forgive him, though, this boy would probably die without you, and it’s not everyday that you find someone willing to _stay_ head over heels for you.”

Iris smiled at Sara, reaching to place a kiss on Barry’s lips, feeling his shoulders relax under her hands.      

And at night, there was more than one reason as to why she couldn’t sleep; unlike the previous night having Barry by her side was not all of it, she also started to regret her decision. It would take a lot for Barry to carry her all the way to Coast City, not to mention that they would have to wait for days, make sure they had the employee's schedule down and get a special court order so they could break into the house, so Iris twisted in bed, considering waking Barry up so they could go back to the cellar, when he asked;

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching for the lights.

“I think we should do this now,” he said, squinting his eyes under the sudden luminosity;  “while they are asleep.”

“Yeah, ok,” Iris agreed.


	4. Chapter 4

Having a partner with super speed came in handy. They still had to wait for their cellphones to be quick enough to take all the pictures and Iris made sure to upload everything on the cloud as soon as they were done, but without Barry’s speed, they couldn’t have done half of it. They managed copies of most of the files (and the fact that the person keeping it organised was apparently anal and maintained everything in chronological order helped) going back 7 years, before they decided to stop; it was getting too close to morning to keep digging.

The files of the agency’s armament robbery were not there though, not anywhere Barry could find anyway, and as useful as all the other documents would probably prove to be, it was frustrating, especially when the possibility of them being wrong about the whole thing started to creep up on Iris.

It was still a success, she tried to convince herself as Barry zoomed them back to their guest-suite, but as she fell on bed, face-first, it felt like a defeat;

“I’m sure once we analyse the files we’ll find something, some kind of clue,” Barry assured her. She sensed the mattress giving in a little with the weight of his body as he sat by her side and Iris groaned into her pillow as a response.

And then Barry pressed two of his fingertips into the nape of her neck and then slowly let them wander down her spine, and even through her sweater, Iris could feel his warmth and it made her skin prickly. She stayed quiet though, she didn’t dare to breath.

Iris allowed for his hand to wander, appreciating the way his fingers seemed to be the only thing moving on his body until he laid on his stomach by her side. Then Iris turned her face slightly so she could look at him.

He was wearing his glasses today. She knew he would put on the contacts before going through the day, but she enjoyed the way the dark rounded frames brought out his beautifully coloured eyes, and if she was being honest, she enjoyed the way he seemed to reserve it for more quiet moments, when there was no one around. For when he was more _real_.

“I want to go home,” she complained.

“Last day,” Barry assured her, fingers skittering on her hair ever so lightly, and Iris studied the way his eyes seemed heavy after a sleepless night, and his messy bed-hair that she wanted to comb with her finger, and how she could see the tip of his tattoo, peaking under the short-sleeve of his t-shirt.

She was curious about the tattoo.

(Barry made her curious about a lot of things.)

She had noticed the tattoo the first night when they moved in together; Iris suspected it was a flower, there was definitely some green in it, but it went up the shoulder and she hadn’t found an excuse to get him shirtless as of yet.

She also didn’t want to ask.

Barry didn’t seem to like to talk about himself. About other stuff, sure, if you would let him get started about the ants that somehow turned into zombies, good luck on getting him to stop, but _he_ wasn’t his favourite subject, which Iris appreciated at the same time that it frustrated her, because she was always afraid of asking something that would be too much, that would cause him to recoil.

So instead of asking about the tattoo like she wanted to, she merely agreed _yeah, last day_ and hoped to get a little sleep before having Sara knocking on their door.

And he smelled nice. Barry smelled nice. And she was afraid to allow herself to fully process it, but right on the edge of her sleep, she considered how once they were back home, she would miss sharing a bed with him. _Stupid_ , her brain let her know.

As it turned out, she wouldn’t have to worry about it; the first night back, her and Barry stayed awake discussing everything they could possibly read of the documents they had photographed. They figured they must have had something hidden on the club property, it was the only explanation as to why the house in Coast City seemed to be some kind of headquarters when the house in Central City was clean, especially considering how most of the crimes actually happened in Central City.  They talked that, until Barry had fallen asleep, on her bed.

Then the next night, it happened again. And then again. She wanted to mock him, ask what had suddenly made her bed so comfortable, but she was afraid that if she did, he wouldn't come back, so she said nothing about it instead.

Almost a whole week afterwards sharing the bed seemed like a habit already. Iris noticed nothing with Barry seemed to take too long for her to get used to, unlike Peanut, who needed until the morning of the next Friday to hop on Iris’s bed again, after five days of giving Iris judgemental looks.

“It’s my bed anyway,” Iris had informed her, so now Peanut had accepted her defeat and was walking on Barry, her little paws stopping on his shoulder blade under Iris’s covers, and doing a little cat’s massage, and Barry woke up to the weight of the cat on him.

“I told you she would warm up to you,” Iris said as he opened his eyes and a smile that morning.

“I think this is less her warming up to me than her just accepting the fact that I’m in your bed on a semi-permanent bases.”

Iris smiled to that, controlling the urge to ask _semi-permanent?_ and once again, trying to decide if it was weird that they slept together without sleeping together.

“I think we should do another search of the club today, I mean, we’ll be there for the party anyway, we should seize the opportunity.”

Barry nodded, closing his eyes again. For such a fast person, he could be really slow in the mornings.

But things didn’t really go as planned at the party. Sara was waiting for them when they arrived, curious as to why Iris had vanished from the boxing training for a week and wanting to tell her about the new ring they were about to install and other seemingly endless topics they had to cover, until she pulled Leonard for a dance.

Iris and Barry would probably be able to do a little snooping, but it turned out, Iris really liked the song so she asked Barry for a dance too, disregarding his reluctance, his _Iris, I’m not sure I’m such a good dancer._

It didn’t matter.

It mattered that he stood tall in front of her, placing his hands on the small of her back softly, almost not touching, like he was asking permission for it. And that she liked the song that came next and that the singer was a good one. Iris rocked Barry by the shoulder according to the rhythm, trying to get him to move and with a small laugh his right hand slipped up, traced her shoulder blades, left exposed in the backless dress she was wearing, and then slid back down her spine slowly, counting the vertebras and Barry had a little smile on his lips, like she was the most brilliant thing he would ever see as she sang off tune _fill my heart with song and let me sing for ever more, you are all I long for all I worship and adore,_ and then his breath caught in his throat and she realised how pretty he was. It hit her suddenly like a wave, leaving her lungs filled with warm water, like she was drowning, or like she would drown if she didn’t do something about it, so she reached for his lips. Not because there was someone around; people would probably see it, but it didn’t matter.

It mattered that Iris realised she had never actually tasted him, all the other times, she had never stopped to feel his lips against hers, so she did now, softly, hoping Barry wouldn’t pull away, and he didn’t. He kept his eyes closed even after her lips left his, and she cleaned the stain her lipstick left behind, like proof of her crime.

Barry studied her eyes attentively and Iris wasn’t sure what he was searching for in them. Probably how much of it was true and she wanted to tell him that all of it was.

If he were to kiss her, she would kiss him back, even if they were alone. She would pull him to her and untie his tie and slip her hands under his shirt and satisfy all the curiosity of her tingling fingertips and of her beating heart. If only he would kiss her.

And then he did.

He pulled her to him, on the tip of her toes so she could reach, and he kissed her bottom lip and then he opened his mouth to her and he kissed her like he meant it, like _she_ meant something that he couldn’t explain with words, and Iris liked the smell of him, and his hands on her back supporting her weight off her feet and the way he always seemed to ask instead of assume, so she offered;

“Maybe we could go home?”

And Barry left out a laugh like he had been holding it into his chest and Iris didn’t need to wait for any other sound to leave his lips for her to know his answer.

 

* * *

 

They should really get out of bed. After the change of plans during the Friday night party and a Saturday of doing nothing (but each other), they should really get out of bed, go to have their Sunday lunch at the club, get some investigation going, but Iris traced his tattoo with her finger pads, the one on his chest, under his heart, the one that read _I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)_ and Barry changed his mind.

He had noticed she seemed to like the tattoos, tracing and kissing and nuzzling on them, and before that, he had caught her looking at the one on his arm whenever he would wear a t-shirt that allowed a peak of it. Iris didn’t ask many questions, and Barry wasn’t one to just offer information about himself, it felt unnecessary, but now, Barry figured she thought she had owned the right to them (she had);

“So, is that for an ex girlfriend or do you just like E. E. Cummings that much?”

“Neither,” he said, considering how he should tell her.

“Neither?” she probed.

“My parents had this poetry book,” he explained; “it was one of the few things from them I got to keep. I know it’s supposed to be this great romantic poem, but I don’t know, it makes me think of them.”

“What about the flowers?” she asked, hands on his shoulder, tracing her nails on the design.

“The water lily was the first one, I mean, I had to retouch it afterwards, couple of years ago when I got the tulip done, but after the first one, I decided I would do a whole sleeve of flowers.”

“It was before the E. E. Cummings one?”

“I was 16,” he confessed, and he knew he was dangerously close to the truth and it would slip out any minute now.

“You were 16?” she questioned, eyes big on him, then she turned to face the ceiling, adding in reminiscing; “I was so stupid when I was 16.”

“I mean, getting a tattoo when you’re 16 is _really_ stupid,” he guaranteed her; “I forged my foster mom’s signature in the authorisation forms.”

“Why?”

“I wanted a reaction, I guess.”

“Why?” Iris insisted and Barry let a laugh out. It was a one word question and yet there was Iris West, making Barry Allen talk like no shrink ever managed to;

“I don’t know, I wanted for someone to care.”

“Did she?”

“She never even saw it,” Barry confessed.

And then Iris seemed to be satisfied with that portion of the subject, questioning next;

“Why a water lily?”

And there was no reason for it, at the moment of his crime it didn’t matter the content of it, he just wanted to rattle someone, he needed the ink on his skin.

“The girl who made the tattoo said I looked like a flower boy. I thought this one was pretty.”

“Really? No exes named Lily, then?”

Barry smiled at that. She seemed to worry about him immortalising one of his girlfriends on his skin and he didn’t understand how such a confident person could be this… possessive.

“No,” he reassured her; “I told you about my exes.”

“I thought maybe a middle name,” she justified.

“I had never kissed a girl at that point, it was before Becky,” he said, traveling his fingers up and down her arm.

“I kissed a boy when I was 16,” she said, tracing his lips now.

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing,” she answered with a small smile; “we kissed. I never even knew his name.”

He raised his eyebrows at that, he couldn’t really imagining kissing someone he didn’t know the name of;  Iris, seemingly reading his mind, laughed at him, justifying;

“For a while I was really angry at myself, he was my first kiss and I don’t know his name, but after a while, I mean, that’s all he was, my first kiss. It wasn’t a good one.”

Barry kissed her; the most preposterous thought that he could compensate for it somehow crossing through his brain.

“All the girls I’ve ever kissed became girlfriends,” he told her, realising there must have been many kisses for Iris that didn’t turn into something. Maybe he got attached too easily.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

Iris was pretty. She was even prettier when she was naked by his side.

Barry enjoyed the smell of her lingering on her bed, on her neck, on his own skin. And the feel of her, warm and soft as he traced her boobs and flicked on the nipples and as he kneaded into her tights and her bun. And the sound of her voice as she talked softly in a whisper, like somehow the empty house could hear them, and of her laughter, like she thought Barry was funny. And the taste of her as he tried every inch of skin his lips could cover.

And it seemed real. All of it, all of her, but then she argued;

“Well, I was your wife before the kiss.”

And it was a reminder that even now, it didn’t matter how real it all seemed, it wasn’t.

“Yeah, you are the exception,” he confirmed, hoping to mask the sudden surge of sadness.

“I like the pink and the green and the pale pale skin,” she told him, back tracing his tattoo again, and it felt like she was trying to escape too.

“Did you give up on the sleeve thing?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I last got one, the carnation.”

Iris placed herself over him, kissing on his collarbones twice and then moving to his tattooed shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll do a half sleeve,” Barry said; “maybe I’ll get an iris next,” he added, because that would be real, it would be on his skin forever just like Iris, because it wouldn’t matter how much time went by, it felt like she would be on him.

“And what will you tell the other girls then?” a dirty smile playing on her lips as she uttered the words.

“That if they are named after flowers, they’ll get a tattoo too.”

Iris slapped him in the shoulder at that and Barry argued;

“Well, you brought it up.”

“Well, that was a rather unsatisfying answer,” she let him know.

He flipped them over and Iris allowed herself to be manhandled under him, and Barry licked her lips until she allowed his tongue in and when he pulled away, he asked;

“What other girls? How is that for an answer?”

“Better,” she told him; “very much so.”

And then she kissed his lips and it should probably feel more pathetic that he truly didn’t ever want any other girl except her.


	5. Chapter 5

“I would just like to point out,” Iris said in an angry whisper, “that you are the one who dumped me, so you don’t get to pout.”

If Barry were being completely honest, he would have to admit she was right, or at least theoretically right. He was already used by now to the fact that he was somewhat of a specialist when it came to rushed decisions and self inflicted pain, but that also didn’t change the fact that it hurt all the same.

The self sabotage hit him one morning when he could feel her heart beat against his skin and she was warm and comfortable and he asked Iris what they were and she said _you are my husband and I’m your wife_ and giggled sleepy with sunny lips searching the crook of his neck, but it wasn’t real, and no matter how much he tried Barry couldn’t wish it into reality. So he told her that what they were doing was probably too unprofessional and that they should stop doing it, and he could see the tears forming in her eyes, but he stuck with his resolution that the pain now was better than a whole lot more of pain later.

Now he wasn’t so sure anymore. Iris stood not even a foot away from him, her back to him, trying to pick on the funny looking lock on the elevator of the administration building of the yacht club and Barry could _feel_ her as it dawned on him how he would never really feel her again and maybe he should have picked pain later. Later was such an undefined thing anyway.

But then the elevator started falling at an alarming speed, indicating Iris must have succeeded in her task with the locker and there were more pressing issues to with which Barry should occupy his mind.

He was bracing himself for a hit, for the way it seemed like the elevator was in a freefall, searching his brain for a way for him to get Iris and himself out of there, for him to compensate gravity with his speed, trying not to be too alarmed by the worried look in Iris’s eyes, when the lift finally started to slow down, landing (definitely underground) softly.

The door opened to a dark, seemingly endless, corridor and Barry was starting to sense a theme on the Rogues hide-out places. Maybe Iris was right and the whole claustrophobia thing was actually a part of the criminal screening process.

She stepped out of the door and even if not feeling completely confident, Barry followed, feeling dirt under his boots, like he had stepped on a soft and recently watered earth.

It smelled like earth as well, and he looked down he found the ground actually hadn’t been paved. They walked through the corridor carefully and all Barry could think of was that he should have told Iris the truth, in case anything were to happen, he should have told her the truth.

It wasn’t easy though. Sometimes he couldn’t fully understand it himself. Once, one of the shrinks his foster mother took him to when he was kid (it was the fourth one since Barry had managed to make the other three refuse to keep on treating him) had looked him in the eyes and explained that his life would be hard, that he would get the urge to run away from the things he cared about before those things were taken away from him.

At the time, Barry thought the shrink was full of shit. It wasn’t like he needed someone to break it to him that life was hard; he learned the lesson when he got home from school one day and his parents were nowhere to be found. He also didn’t have anything he really cared about; there was nothing in his life left to lose.

And until now Barry went through his life with a certainty that the shrink was wrong. He didn’t have many friends, but he was good at forgiving the ones he had when needed, he never ran away from them. And all of the girlfriends he ever had always left him, not the other way around.

But now, in the dark, where he couldn’t really see Iris but he could feel her hand reaching for his and he could sense the danger approaching them, he considered the possibility that the wrong one had been Barry himself. Losing those girls had been difficult and hurtful but manageable. Now there was this overwhelming certainty surging through him that if he lost Iris, he couldn’t live. Not in some metaphysical teenage angst kind of way. It was the preposterous certainty that he wouldn’t be able to breath if something happened to her.

It was so stupid. It wasn’t real. He didn’t even have her in the first place and you can’t loose something you don’t have.

She should know, though. He should tell her the truth. He should say something, but as soon as an _Iris_ was out of his lips, she shushed him with a finger on his lips, and then she pointed to her ear and Barry could hear muffled voices coming from somewhere.  

“I’m telling you, you’ll get you gold gun, you just have to be patient,” Barry heard Snart’s voice.

“And how exactly?” and that wasn’t Sara, there was another woman’s voice.

“I’m looking into the guy who makes the guns, I told you, I’ll get him to do that for you somehow,” now Barry really needed to do something.

“And I’m bored and in a hurry, I told you.”

Barry had to squint his eyes so he could locate a door in the dark, the only tell being that it shined a little differently from the walls that surrounded it, but as he approached it, the voices became slightly clearer as confirmation.

Before he could process anything else though, it started to slide open and Iris stepped into the shadows and the darkness of the corridor hid her from view, but Barry ran into the room, passing in the middle of Snart and the woman by his side, finding all the armaments and all the ammunition stored in there, in glass drawers, like on an exhibition of a museum.

Leonard and the woman with him turned around, undoubtedly searching for the telling yellow lightning;

“Well, well, well. We have a speedster. I have to admit that wasn’t the meta-human I was hoping they would send my way.”

Leonard reached for the gun resting on the desk kept in the middle of the room, taking a shot aimlessly, as he stepped around the desk, fingers searching for a button, and Barry figured that button probably opened (and closed) the door from the office.

Barry’s mind raced around, trying to formulate a plan. Getting locked up on the room with Leonard and another rogue sounded like a terrible idea, but at the same time, he had already revealed his presence, and leaving would give them time to up the protection around the place, or worse, change the location of the guns, leaving Barry and Iris on ground zero all over again.

But as much as he was trying to find a solution on how to proceed on the arrest and recover the guns, all Barry could actually plan was how he was getting Iris out of there. He needed to get Iris out of there. They weren’t expecting a confrontation at all. They had checked and knew for sure Sara was home when they left for the club, but they stupidly assumed her husband would be there too.

“I do know who you are though,” Leonard spoke to the air in front of him and Barry couldn’t keep on running around doing nothing, he would expend all his energy at some point, but Leonard confirmed;

“Barry Allen. I was waiting for the moment when you would reveal your abilities. You are not such a good actor, you know. Neither is your _wife_ , but I gotta a feeling, she’ll be easier to handle.”

And Barry couldn’t afford for Iris to be found there with him, so he carried her to the elevator, still open from their ride, pressed the first floor bottom and instructed her;

“Call the agency. I’ll handle him until then.”

But to do so he had to slow down and the second he stopped moving, he saw Iris’s panicked face as she watched something behind him before he actually felt the cold taking over his body. Iris tried reaching for him and the sound of her voice crying out _Barry!_ hurt him more than the cold ever could, but he prayed she wouldn't try to come back alone, he prayed she would make the smart decisions, but the elevator door was closed before he could tell her he healed fast, all he had time for was;

“I’m ok, Iris.”

* * *

 

Iris was going to kill Barry Allen. After making sure he was alive, she was absolutely killing him.

 _I’m ok, Iris_.

The stupid fucker got shot, with a gun, _designed to hurt him,_ to stop speedsters, and he had the guts to tell her he was _ok._

She was honestly getting tired of that senseless Barry-logic. She didn’t know what to do to get through his skull that she was his partner.

She honestly thought she had some insight of his mind, that in some way, they understood each other, even if it was always so hard to get anything out of him. They seemed to agree on things, to jump to the same conclusions at the same time, but then he woke up one day and decided that he didn’t want her anymore, that what they were doing was _unprofessional,_ like she had made that decision on her own, like he hadn’t kissed her back and sucked her up, like he hadn’t licked her belly button and laughed at the sound he got out of her.

It was one thing to pretend like all of that meant nothing, though, to pretend like her telling him stuff about her life, about her parents and about Eddie, wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but it was another to take decisions for the both of them while in the field. To decide that this wasn’t a partnership, that she didn’t get to decide if she should be out of there or not. That he should be the hero when Iris was the one fully trained for handling it.

And now, thanks to his stupid heroism, he was hurt and she couldn’t even get back down underground (or underwater since, by her calculations, the corridor they walked through must have covered the distance between the administration building on the waterfront and the actual water), again because when back on the first floor, the elevator went into security mode, asking (quite literally since a voice started resonating) for the security code.

Barry Allen was a dead man.

The problem was she couldn’t call the agency for back up. They would think that arresting the leader of the Rogues and getting the armament back was the top priority of the mission, and it shouldn’t be. For Iris, it wasn’t. Getting Barry out of there alive was _her_ priority, but after a few attempts to crack the code, all frustrated from failing, Iris decided to try something else:

The Snart house wasn’t code protected, so opening the front door wasn’t much of a problem, but after five minutes of frantically going around the home office and coming up empty handed, Iris decided that waking Sara up was her best option.

The secret would be to get her unprepared, shorten her reaction time, so Iris prepared her revolver, holding it ready in case Sara decided to fight her, and with her knee, she knocked into the bed until Sara jumped, hand on her heart and not fully processing the scene; she appeared relieved it was Iris waking her up;

“Iris, what the hell! You scared the crap out of me!”

As far as reactions went, that was weird, but Sara did actually seem to relax back into her pillow, so Iris decided to cut whatever plan she had short by informing her;

“Leonard has Barry.”

“What?”

“I know you know Sara, we were under the yacht club tonight, and Leonard has Barry.”

“What are you talking about?”

Iris took a deep breath, each second was another second of Barry stuck there with a psychopath and his little helper, she needed to cut the chase, she needed for Sara to properly wake up, so she tried being as clear as possible because Iris would need Sara, so simply knocking her out would be very counter-productive.

“I’m talking about the armament you and Leonard stole, I’m saying we were investigating and now he has Barry and you’ll help me get back in there.”

“He stole — oh my God — he — he went on with that plan?”

Sara sounded surprised and once again Iris was taken aback by how truthful she seemed, her eyes moving in confusion and Iris didn’t know how to respond to that, she merely waited for Sara’s next reaction.

She slowly sat up in bed, apparently talking more to herself than to Iris;

“He promised me he wouldn’t! I told him that messing with the MNSA was too much, that we didn’t need that, we had no need of all those guns — I — you are MNSA?”

Iris nodded.

After Barry she was doubting herself, doubting her interpretation of the people around her, but then Sara asked the wrong thing and Iris saw the woman who she had become friends with instead of someone on the opposite side;

“And Barry?”

Iris nodded again, the panic in the pit of her stomach making her sick as she said;

“Yeah — he’s a meta-human.”

That made Sara jump out of bed, grabbing a pair of jeans and saying;

“Oh my God! Lenny!”

Iris couldn’t help the humourless laugh;

“Don’t worry, he has a gun that can stop Barry. And he has back up.”

“Lisa?”

And in all of their research they had never come up with that name, so Iris merely agreed;

“A woman, yeah,” in hopes that Sara would give her extra information, and it worked, she told Iris;

“His sister.”

So Iris found herself spilling everything;

“I need to get Barry out of there. I can’t call the agency — they’ll — I need to make sure Barry is safe, he was already hurt — I can’t —”

“No, no! Don’t call the agency,” Sara agreed in a hurry; “I’m sure we can solve this.”

“Not if I don’t get Barry back right now! Right now, Sara!”

Sara nodded at her earnestly, so Iris questioned;

“Do you know the security code of the club?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the code.”

On the drive back to the club, Iris couldn’t stop shaking, this horrible cold enveloping her. She almost stopped twice thinking she would be sick, and the silence wasn’t helping, it only allowed her mind to run free, conjuring the most horrendous scenarios of what would have happened to Barry once she made it back there, so when Sara asked;

“What will happen?” Iris welcomed it; she needed a distraction. She figured Sara must need it too.

“I can’t tell you.”

“I had no idea about this, ok?” Sara promised her; “I would never guess you were MNSA, I thought you were my friend. You are the first friend I made ever since I moved here and it wasn’t even real. I should be pissed at you right now.”

“Well, your husband has my partner under a gun so you’ll understand why I feel slightly resistant trusting you.”

“Wait, you guys aren’t married?”

And it seemed so completely preposterous to Iris that that was what Sara picked to comment on at the moment. It got a smile on Iris’s face though; it seemed even more absurd that she managed a smile at a time like that, so she just repeated as explanation;

“We’re MNSA, Sara.”

“I just thought —” Sara shut up suddenly, changing her mind in which way to take the conversation and telling Iris one more time; “I didn’t know about the guns.”

“Then you won’t get prosecuted,” Iris assured her.

The truth was, she liked Sara, and she wanted to believe she knew nothing about it, and she wanted to trust her, but she needed Barry safe first, then she could reassess her position.

“But Lenny will,” Sara concluded, but at the moment, Iris felt that not much would redeem Snart in her eyes;

“He shot Barry.”

“He wouldn’t,” Sara shook her head; “not unless he was in danger. I know Lenny.”

“Barry had his back at him,” Iris told her; “he shot Barry in the back with a cold gun, Sara.”

And Sara shook her head again and Iris thought that if she wasn’t being truthful, she was a hell of an actress.

“No, no,” Sara said; “we don’t hurt anyone, we don’t hurt people, and we only take from the ones that won’t really miss it.”

“We miss our guns,” Iris pointed out and Sara shook her head again.

Iris thought they were a unit, Sara and Leonard, it was weird witnessing they weren’t. But then again, she thought Barry and her were a unit, but if they were, she would be underwater, in that dimly lit room together at the moment, and not parking their car as she and Sara arrived at the club.

She turned to Sara, deciding to offer her all she could;

“Look, I can’t promise you nothing will happen with Leonard, he’s going to jail, after what he did with Barry, I’m making sure of it. But you help me and I’ll keep you out.”

“He’s my husband, Iris.”

“He’s been lying to you. He knew Barry and I were MNSA, he knew Barry was a meta-human, that is why I thought you knew.”

Sara kept quiet at that, so Iris probed;

“Did he share any of it with you?”

Her question was met with silence once again, so Iris placed her cold hand on Sara’s arm and begged;

“Then help me, and I’ll help you.”

And all Sara offered was a curt nod, but it was enough.


	6. Chapter 6

This was crazy. _Batshit crazy_.

Granted, Iris was used to doing some crazy shit in her life, specially for a mission. She had had, several times, her mom, her dad, Wally and even Mason, accusing her of having a death wish. But this was different. This wasn’t for some mission, this wasn’t about her career. This was a different kind of crazy and if someone came up to her three weeks ago and told her she was about to do she would have laughed in their faces. And nonetheless, here she was. Completely sober as well.

“Iris Ann West and Bartholomew Henry Allen,” the lady with the cat-eyed glasses called.

Barry jumped on his feet by her side, feeling his jacket pocket and telling her;

“Shit! I forgot them.”

“You put them in the pocket of your pants,” Iris reminded him.

“Oh, that’s right!” he told her, relief washing all over his face as he found what he was looking for.

Barry raised his eyebrows at Iris, questioningly and extended his hand to her and sometimes he could be so sweet and generous and kind.

Iris took a deep breath and grabbed his hand ignoring the tingling all over her body. Or maybe it was actually the tingling that was making her do this.

Iris had spent her life being completely aware of all the risks she was taking, but with Barry, she would look into his pretty green eyes and his stupidly long eyelashes and all she could do was feel, and things would make sense in a way that wasn’t rational. With Barry, it was all skin and lungs, but she wanted it, she wanted it so much, so she closed her eyes for a second, interlacing their fingers and just let go.

* * *

_[18 hours earlier]_

The doors of the elevator slid open to an empty corridor once again, and the silence of it sent Iris’s heart on a crazy fast beat. Or maybe her body just seemed louder in the inhospitable environment. The room where the guns were stored was closed, but the lack of noises seemed to indicate they were no longer there.

Iris was heading to the room nonetheless, but Sara grabbed her by the arm, the cold of her hand matching Iris’s, and pulled her to a passage Iris had missed the first time around. They walked on this new path for what seemed like an eternity until Iris saw a stripe of blue light coming from under another door - the one Sara appeared to be going for.

She was about to step into the room, but Iris held her back, hoping to hear something useful, something that would indicate what was happening inside the room;  

“I don’t know,” Iris heard Leonard say; “simply killing him doesn’t sound like a solution.”

“He doesn’t seem willing to collaborate,” the woman, Lisa, argued.

Iris watched a panic settling on Sara’s features and Iris figured that was more convincing than any argument she could use.

“You know what happens to the body at such a low temperature, Barry?” Lisa said; “I mean besides your powers being affected?”

And Leonard was the one to conclude;

“Your heart beat slows down, your breathing becomes more difficult, so how about you tell us your plan? Let us know just how to catch wife dearest, and I’ll let you melt.”

“Fuck you,” Iris heard Barry say with venom in his voice.

“That’s not useful in anyway,” Iris heard Lisa purring; “I say we flee,” she spoke more objectively; “and if we encounter his wife on the way, we kill her.”

“If you touch her —” Barry tried to say, but Iris could hear the weakness in his voice.

“What? What will you do?” Lisa disdained.

“He’ll die a slow and painful death,” Leonard informed; “and there’s nothing he can possibly do to save her.”

“I’ll go in,” Iris told Sara; “if you want to help —”

“I do,” Sara intervened.

“Ok, then you’ll wait for the opportune moment, do you understand?”

Sara nodded and Iris prayed she wasn’t trusting their lives with the wrong hands. She reached for her cellphone and sent her location to Mason as Sara typed in the code to open the door.

The door slid open and revealed a room made of glass, surrounded by water, and if Iris knew exactly how low under water they were, she could use it as an escape route, but before she could actually fully consider it, her eyes found Barry, covered by an ice-cocoon up to his torso, his lips purple and Iris’s heart sank at the sight of him.

Before either Leonard or Lisa could react to the fact that Iris was entering the room she took a shot at Lisa, standing by Barry’s side, grazing her right hand and causing her to drop the gun she was holding.

Leonard reacted accordingly, aiming at Iris who somersaulted away from the aim of his gun, grabbing Lisa by the good arm and placing her revolver against her head.

Leonard let out a humourless laugh at the sight and informed her;

“I know you won’t shoot. You’re MNSA, it would scratch your record.”

“Try me,” Iris dared him and he laughed again so Iris took a shot at him, grazing his leg, making a hole in his pants and she ignored the way Barry breathed _Iris_ by her side. If she were to turn and look at him, she wouldn’t be able to keep a clear head; she would lose the upper hand to Leonard just to get Barry out of the ice.

“Here is what we’ll do,” she told Leonard placing her gun against Lisa’s head again; “you’ll let Barry go right now —”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Leonard said, so Iris took a shot at the cold gun he was holding, causing it to spin on the ground and informing him;

“I’m not asking.”

“See, my gun makes the ice, it doesn’t melt it,” Leonard told her grabbing the gun back up, and the way he held it looked, to Iris, like the way one would hold a wounded animal, and by his voice, that had lost some of the usual smoothness, Iris could tell that his patience was running thin.

That was when her cellphone vibrated in her pocket. She fished it out, the location light blinking red and Iris told Leonard;

“See this? This is my boss informing me there are agents coming right now, they are about 5 minutes away. So how about you pull Barry out of the ice and we start a real conversation here?”

“Lenny, don’t --” Lisa advised him, becoming quiet as Iris pulled a chunk of her shiny brown hair out of her head.

“Be quiet.” Leonard instructed despite of his sister’s sudden silence, then he turned to Iris and said; “I have to say, _Iris_ , I don’t feel very inclined to take upon your offer.”

“I can keep Sara out of all of this,” Iris offered; “that is if you care about her,” Iris nagged, not because she doubted his affections - like Barry had noted, they seemed happy, like they truly did love each other - but because that was exactly what Iris could see riling him up.

“Because I have to tell you,” she continued; “if you let the chips fall where they may, it will be very difficult to convince a jury your wife didn’t know about any of it.”

Leonard kept quiet but Iris had to cut his reaction time; she needed an answer as fast as possible, she needed Barry out of the ice; his lips were blue from the cold and she wasn’t able to concentrate properly on anything until she knew for sure he would be fine.

“Lenny, just do what she’s asking,” Sara said, stepping into the room; “please.”

That seemed to disarm Leonard, a flash of shame flickering through his features as he said;

“Sara --”

“You promised me.” Sara said to him, her hand reaching for his face; “I told you we shouldn’t mess with the MNSA and you promised me you wouldn’t, Lenny.”

“Sara,” he tried again, and Iris felt like she was invading their privacy by merely standing seven feet away.

“Please?” Sara begged; “you own me at least that much.”

“I’m sorry,” he said finally; “I’m sorry.”

Then looking past his wife, at Iris again, he demanded, in a completely different voice from the one he was using with Sara;

“You let Lisa go too, then.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Iris told him.

Then several things happened at once; Iris heard Barry scream _Iris!_ but when she noticed what he was trying to tell her, the hand holding the revolver had already been hit by a gush of the ice from the cold gun. It was her revolver’s turn to spin around the room. Iris saw Sara grabbing it; she had merely to reach for it, since it had flown to her feet, and for a brief moment, Iris was sure she had gotten herself and Barry killed, but Sara pointed at Leonard, crying out;

“You’re not hurting them! Lenny! Think a little, if you kill one of them, that’s first degree murder!”

But Lisa had already escaped, using the distraction as her cue, and Iris figured that must had been her brother’s plan all along.

Barry turned as much as he could, questioning worriedly;

“Are you ok?” like Iris was the one buried in ice.

Leonard dropped his gun on the floor and sat down on the closest chair, hands held up, surrendering under his wife’s aim, so Iris gave up on trying to control anything else to fully focus on getting Barry warm, her hands digging through the ice.

She wanted nothing more than to tend to Barry, but she could hear the agents arriving and she needed to make sure they weren’t arresting Sara as well; as soon as Barry was free enough to get himself out of the cocoon, he instructed her;

“I’m fine. Go,” and he nodded as an incentive as Iris watched Mason approaching Sara.

That took some convincing, but Mason finally allowed, when Iris agreed on signing some documents declaring she was responsible for making sure Sara would follow through on her promise to appear for however many interrogations the agency deemed necessary, to let her go.

“I don’t have a home in Central City anymore,” Sara said when they were back on surface -- and the openness of the parking lot was a relief after spending some time under the earth -- as they approached the back of the ambulance where the paramedics were keeping Barry.

Iris still couldn’t properly see him, she wanted to hold his hands, make sure his nails and lips were no longer purple, make sure he was back at like his normal warm self, so the weight on her chest - however diminished - wasn’t completely gone.

“Are any of the properties in your name?” Iris asked.

“A Starling City apartment, and one of the cars,” Sara told her.

“You can stay with us for as long as we keep the house,” Iris said; “probably just a couple of days, but we can figure something out afterwards.”

“I need a job,” Sara whined; “or how else will I manage to pay a lawyer?” and Iris laughed at her thought process, at how pragmatical she seemed to be taking things.

Iris finally reached Barry; he had a blanket over his shoulders, but he was still in his wet clothes, and his lips were still purple, so as she cooed on him, brushing his cold hair off his forehead, he guaranteed;  

“I’m all right, Iris. I’m all right.”

“You are purple,” she told him, tracing his lips with her thumb, because really, his insistence on reassuring her had clearly no effect when she could obviously see, and feel, how much of a lie it was.  

“I’m all right,” he insisted again.

He needed a hot shower and dry clothes, and the whole speech about how she was his partner so he was permanently forbidden to ever do something like this ever again could wait until he was back at his pink state, so she just offered;

“Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

 

There was a knock on Iris’s bedroom door. Barry was sitting on her bed, since his own bedroom was being occupied by Sara at the moment, and after Barry instructed _come in,_ he was surprised to see it was actually the bedroom’s owner knocking.

It seemed completely ridiculous to him, all the stiffness and all the formality. It was her bedroom, and he was sitting on her bed and she was the one acting like a guest. She had seen him naked probably less than 24 hours ago and she was acting like she had never even touched him.

And suddenly it hit him how this wouldn’t be Iris’s bedroom for much longer, probably a day, two at the most, and they would be back at their own place. Separate places. And then pretending they had never touched each other would probably turn out to be the standard; he would be completely avoidable, and they could go back to being strangers like they had never shared a bed before.

A cold invaded him at the idea, freezing his insides in a way no ice could ever compare.

She closed the bedroom door behind her and walked towards him in complete silence until she was standing right in front of him.

“How are you?” Iris asked, all the tiredness dawning in her eyes.

“Good,” Barry assured her; “you?”

“You feel cold,” she told him, placing one hand on his forehead, and slowly bringing the other so she could cradle his face, fingers traveling on his cheeks and on his jaw, tilting his head to her, so she could study him, and in moments like this, Barry felt that she had access to all of his thoughts and that she could _see_ him in a way he couldn’t see himself.

“I’m ok, Iris.”

“I’m afraid that phrase has completely lost its meaning to me,” she told him, her face serious, but Barry laughed at it anyway.

“Sara?” Barry asked her.

“She’ll be ok. I told her I think she would make a good agent,” Barry couldn’t help the smile at Iris, she fancied herself cool and detached but she could like so easily sometimes.

Iris let go of him, taking a step back, not one hint of smile on her pretty lips, so Barry reached for her hand, pulling her closer.

He wanted so much to bury himself on her, into her, and kiss her, and get her naughty laugh out of her one last time, so he could feel the world tilting back to place. Instead he traveled the pad of his fingers down her arms, soft and warm.

“I need a shower,” she told him, so in place of telling her what he needed to, Barry let her go.

When she came out of the bathroom, her hair wet and wearing her short pyjamas and a hoodie much too big for her (probably part of the wardrobe the agency had put together for him, but that Barry had never had the opportunity to wear), Barry tried to gather his courage, nagging himself out of his stupidity, but the words were stuck inside him; he couldn’t formulate them, he wasn’t able to form them inside his head, much less force them out.

“Maybe you should put on more clothes,” she offered him, throwing a pair of grey sweat pants and a matching hoodie at him and Barry dressed up in them, not fully certain if she wasn’t comfortable with him in his t-shirt and boxers or if she was worried he hadn’t warmed up still.

“I’m fine, Iris.”

“Are you sure?”

“I heal fast,” he told her, reaching for her hair as she sat at the bed, by his side. He would brush it behind her ear because that was something she would do every now and again; it was her tell, he had noticed, how he could figure out she was feeling shy, and Barry got a habit of mimicking it during the last couple of days they had been _together._ But Iris abruptly moved herself out of his reach.

There was this immeasurable line between the acceptable and the unacceptable between them and Barry had never had that with anyone else. He considered if he should offer to go sleep on the couch or somewhere else, but that was just more space for him to coward in fear, so instead he concluded;

“Besides, the hot shower got all the blood circulating again, don’t worry.”

And then Iris’s eyes finally met his and that got all of the breath out of his lungs. And he wanted her so much, and he had had her, and it was his own fault for being so stupid, so as she called;

“Barry —”

He said;

“I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t sure she would understand what he was apologising for; he wasn’t sure he did himself. He was trying to squeeze all of it in. How he acted on the mission, for putting himself in danger and worrying her, for breaking up with her, for hurting her.

“Are you?” Iris asked.

Barry took a deep breath and reached for her, pulling her into his lap, and Iris allowed it so Barry nuzzled in the crook of her neck, smelling her in, enjoying her fingers combing through his hair, and the feel of her, and how it settled him, calming him down, so he told her;  

“I love you, Iris. I love you,” only then realising fully how true it was as the words escaped his lips.

“Then why did you break up with me?” she questioned, and when she met no response from him, she asked again; “why, Barry?”

“I wanted for it to be real,” he said because he couldn’t find another way to describe it.

“I told you, it’s real, I promised you, you just had to believe.”

“You said you’re my wife and I —”

“It was a joke, Barry,” Iris justified, and he figured she was probably thinking he felt that was too much too soon, and not the other way around, so he told her;

“I know — I just — I wanted for that to be real too.”

She held him by the chin, directing his gaze to meet hers and asked seriously;

“That’s why?”

“Yeah, that’s why,” he nodded.

Iris let her fingers travel on his scalp,  and Barry leaned into her touch and reached for her lips with his and all the fear of her being unresponsive vanished the second they touched and when his breath got caught in his throat, Barry felt like he could actually breath again.

“Ok, then let’s get married,” Iris said, pulling away.

Barry startled in place. Out of all the things he expected for her to suggest as solution that was certainly not one of them. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to. He did. But he didn’t want for her to feel like she had to, and he was scared of saying the wrong thing, of being interpreted wrong. Of being too stupid once again.

“Let’s get married,” she offered again, filling his silence; “we’ll go tomorrow.”

“Iris.” Barry managed.

“I mean today, right, I just need some sleep, and when we wake up — we’ll go get married.”

“Iris, you don’t have to do that,” he assured her.

Iris took his glasses off, folding them and placing them on the nightstand, then she shifted on his lap, so her legs were straddling his and she licked his lips open, her hands feeling him up, skin on skin and she informed him;

“I was never good at doing stuff because I had to.”

Barry studied her eyes before kissing her again and deciding to allow her anything and everything she wished, his own hands reaching for under her top, traveling up her spine and finding her nipples and Iris told him;

“I thought you were dead, you could have died — I don’t ever wanna lose you.”

So he told her, with more confidence this time;

“I love you, Iris.”

“Is that a yes?” she asked as she pulled his hoodie and t-shirt off, all concern about him not being warm enough lost on her.

Iris let her finger wander on his stomach, kissing his shoulder and then his collarbone, moving lower, as Barry said on a strained voice;

“Yes.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After that I have a little epilogue coming and then that's it for this fic! Thanks to everyone following it, and for all the comments, they are greatly appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

“Mom! I already told you that I’m sorry,” Iris said, for the third time in 15 minutes.

She didn’t blame her mom’s anger, or rather _surprise_ as Francine kept insisting. Iris knew it must have been shocking to grab the files from her daughter's latest missions and see Iris West-Allen under her signature, but the final preparations of Barry’s first family Sunday lunch was hardly the time to discuss it.

“That does not sound like you are sorry at all. Do you have any idea what it felt like?”

In her defence, Iris was slightly ashamed. It wasn’t like any of it had been planned, and that was the whole point. With Eddie, she thought things through, obsessively even, every step of the way, and when she found out he wanted to propose, when she stumbled upon the little pale green box in his underwear drawer, none of it mattered. It was in her gut, she hadn’t been happy about it, she felt panicky and faintly sick. The whole thing with Barry seemed insane, that wasn’t lost on her, but felt right, and she was getting tired of justifying it.

“Well, if I signed it Iris West, the documents wouldn’t have been valid,” she justified, even though she knew that wasn’t the point.

“Iris! This isn’t funny!” her mom reprimanded.

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” she argued, because it had been. She decided she wanted to marry him between his voice as he said earnestly he wanted for her to be his wife and his eyes shining softly and darkened as he looked into hers.   

“And you couldn’t spare a minute to call your mom and say _hey, mom, I’m getting married today, wanna come watch it?_ ”

And there she couldn’t really offer her mom the whole truth, so she offered half of it;

“I’m sorry, mom. If I called you, you would try to talk me out of it, just like you are trying to talk me out of it now.”

The other half of it being that she hadn’t wanted to share it with anyone other than Barry. He wouldn’t have his parents there, he didn’t have family to bring and watch and be happy for him, so it felt incredibly selfish for her to do so.

Besides, it was about them, no one else; she wanted him, he wanted her, that was all they needed to get married. That and a witness.   

“I gave up talking you in or out of anything since you were four years old and I couldn’t convince you to wear the clothes I wanted you to, Iris. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I never expected something like that from you.”

Iris kept quiet, hoping that if she wouldn’t answer, the talk would die down and she would be able to finish the dressing of the salad and join the boys, check if Barry had chosen the right glasses when setting the table, check if her dad and Wally were behaving, but her mom wouldn’t let go;

“You took his name, Iris,” and Iris was wondering when they would reach this part of the conversation.

“I kept mine too,” she said.

“So, what happened to my daughter? The one who swore to me she would take no guy’s name, ever. Even if she did got married, which was not very likely?”

And yeah, Iris had said all those things after Eddie. Her mom had been devastated with the break up, she loved Eddie, they all did to some extent, and she had never said it out loud but Iris suspected that Francine was expecting grandbabies any minute then. Iris had to admit that Eddie had been good to her, he had been understanding and supportive and she loved him, very much, and but she didn’t want to marry him, so she figured she would never want to marry anyone, so when she said it, it had been true.      

“She changed her mind,” she told her mom simply, because she was constantly telling her _it’s always your prerogative to change your mind, Iris._

But now all Francine did was shoot her an unimpressed look.

“Look, mom, I get it, ok? But the whole goal of this family lunch is for you guys to get to know Barry, and you can’t do that keeping me here in the kitchen while he’s alone out there with dad and Wally, so how about you get to know Barry?” she asked.

Francine sighed in defeat and Iris added;

“You and I can go shopping this week, or get our nails done or something, and then you can nag me all you want about getting married without telling you, all right?” Iris was already stressed enough about the meal, about her parents and her brother meeting and getting along with her _husband_ without having to add this inevitable discussion with her mom, so when she started;

“Iris —” Iris placed the salad bowl in her arms, grabbing the bottle of wine she had picked for the meal and assured her;

“I’m happy, mom. I’m sure about this, and I’m happy,” hoping that would be enough.

And Francine finally conceded her a small _ok_ , but Iris knew that was about all the victory she was going to get that day.

But as it turned out, Iris wouldn’t have to worry too much about it, because when she stepped into the living room, it looked like things were going smoothly with her boys; Wally was asking Barry what he had done to win Peanut’s (who was laying on Barry’s lap) affection.

Wally had a theory that Iris’s cat was a misandrist since she only ever allowed women to pet her, to what Iris liked to respond that it wasn’t a matter of hating men, it was just the knowledge of how disappointing they usually were. So Iris smiled at her brother, thankful he was showing no resistance to any of it, that he was choosing to share their joke with Barry, so after that, she was able to relax and actually enjoy the food and the family-day.

It was only when everyone had gone home and Barry settled by her side on the sofa and Iris turned his way so she could pet his hair that she noticed he seemed gloomy. She had a feeling he had held whatever it was aside until they were alone and only now it was coming out, so she questioned;

“What’s wrong?” but he kept insisting it was nothing until, finally, when they were already in bed for the night, and Barry was kissing the crook of her neck, he pulled away and told her;

“I overheard your talk with your mom. Well, part of it.”

“Oh,” Iris offered, because she hadn’t said anything that would justify him turning blue, but it was Barry they were talking about, he could be extremely sensitive every now and again, so it was best to let him talk and get there by himself, and as she predicted, he continued;

“I mean, why did you take my name? I didn’t ask you to.”

“I know,” Iris answered, because that was the whole point, it wasn’t his choice, it was _hers._

“I would have been fine if you didn’t,” he insisted.

“I know, Barry.”

“Then why did you?”

Iris reached for the lamp on her nightstand, turning it on, and Barry blinked at the light, questioning;

“Should I put my glasses on for this?”

Iris shook her head in response, smiling at him because he was so very cute sometimes.

“I just — You didn’t have anyone that shared your name,” she said, bracing herself to how he would react to it. She wasn’t planning on telling him, it was her decision, and she had decided it, but she also knew he wouldn’t let go, not after hearing what her mom said.

“So it was a pity thing?” he asked.

“No, Barry, it wasn’t pity. I just wanted to give you that, because I think it matters and it’s not fair to you.”

“You think what matters?” he asked, his voice accusatory.

“Having a family, having someone that has your name, it matters, and I hate that your parents were taken away from you, and I hate that on top of that, your foster mom didn’t really care, and I hate that your best friend was once reporting on you —,” and he had confessed that last part one day they had spent in bed, before the wedding, before the break up even. Barry told her he was so sure Iris had been reporting on him because when he went to college, the agency had assigned another meta-human to be his roommate, the one who designed the guns, and he confessed to Barry several months in that he had been reporting on him.

Iris had met Cisco now, and she was sure that his friendship with Barry was real, that he was nice, that he loved Barry, but it still broke her heart to hear Barry recounting how, at the beginning, the agency had instructed Cisco to befriend and report on Barry because apparently he was “high flight risk”, whatever that meant. So she tried being patient, taking a deep breath before continuing;

“— so I wanted to give you that, because everyone deserves a family, because it’s you, and it’s my decision and it’s my name, it’s mine to give.”

“Ok,” he said resignatorialy, so Iris repeated;

“Ok.”

And as soon as she turned the light off and went back to her sleeping position, she felt Barry’s lips back at her neck so she laughed at his volatility, at the fact that once he had his answer, he just went back to business, hands pushing her t-shirt up.

And he laughed too; Iris wasn’t sure why, maybe he was feeling a bit ridiculous, maybe it was just relief, but in the dark, with his lips tracing her collarbones, he said;

“Thank you for taking my name. It does matter.”

She pulled him over her, placing a kiss on his bottom lip, and she didn’t like saying it, she felt saying it was no proof of it, that it added nothing, but she also suspected Barry needed all the reassurance he could get, so she told him;

“I love you, Barry.”

He took his own t-shirt off, leaving hers puddled above her boobs, and he placed a kiss on her chest bone, and another one on her belly button, and said;

“And you’re my family.”

“And I’m your family,” she promised.

“I love you too.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this story! Thanks for the kudos and the comments, they are much appreciated! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to withaflashoflove and Ishipit87 for being awesome and helping me with this story so much!


End file.
